Associate ProfessorThe University of Auckland: European Languages and Literature

Biography

Minako O'Hagan is Associate Professor at the School of Cultures Languages and Linguistics (CLL), a position she took up in September 2016. Prior to joining CLL, she spent fourteen years in Dublin City University, Ireland, where she lectured in translation technology, multimedia translation and terminology.

She has research specialisms in translation technology with extensive publications, including the co-authored, first monograph in Translation Studies on videogames translation, published by John Benjamins: Game Localization: Translating for the Global Digital Entertainment Industry (O'Hagan andMangiron 2013).

She has an international research network of collaborators in Europe and Japan.

I am interested in a broad range of technology-related topics in Translation Studies, including fan translation, translation crowdsourcing and, more recently, accessibility captioning in Augmented Reality (AR). Through the Eurpean project INTERACT I have extended my interest in fan community translation to crisis community translation in order to understand the needs for translation at the time of major crises. I have a book contract with Routledge for the edited volume: the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology to be published in 2018. My current work includes ethical and legal issues in non-professional translation in digital environments. I am also interested to develop new experimental research methodologies for empirically-based reception studies to shed light on users of translated and localised products.

Book contract with Routledge to edit the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology.

August 2017 - April 2018: Principal Investigator for Captions on Holodeck (proof of concept project) funded by the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland. Involving interdisciplinary research team with an industry partner, the project investigates the user experience of an Augmented Reality environment for projecting English captions of lectures for deaf-and-hard-of-hearing students as well as international students who are non-native speakers of English.

April 2017-April 2020: Project Member of the International Network on Crisis Translation (INTERACT) funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE - grant number 734211). INTERACT was officially launched in April 2017 at the project lead Dublin City University (DCU) (PI Dr. Sharon O’Brien see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L5DawQ5YHE) in collaboration with partner institutions, including the University College London (UCL) and the University of Auckland (UoA). INTERACT aims to: 1) enable accurate and timely translation-enabled crisis communication; 2) improve outcomes for crisis-affected and at-risk communities by contributing to translation-enabled communication with those communities; and 3) enhance human skills, competences and cross-sectoral collaboration involved in crisis translation.

November 2009: Colm Caffrey: Relevant Abuse? Investigating the effects of an abusive subtitling procedure on the perception of TV anime using eye tracker and questionnaire

March 2007: Johann Roturier (co-supervision): An investigation into the impact of controlled English rules on the comprehensibility, usefulness and acceptability of machine-translated technical documentation for French and German users

Committees/Professional groups/Services

Conference Organising Committee for Languages and the Media international conference series

External academic programme examiner (the University of Sheffield: 2009-2013; the University of Leeds: 2010-2014)

Selected publications and creative works (Research Outputs)

O'Hagan M (2018). The future of translation as a profession - the consequences of technological and social change. Paper presented at International Seminar on Translation and Interpreting (ISTrI) 2018, Malaysia, Penang. 17 October - 19 October 2018. Related URL.

O'Hagan M (2018). Translating in the Age of AI, participatory culture and mixed reality: What defines human translation?. Paper presented at International Seminar on Translation and Interpreting (ISTrI) 2018, Penang, Malaysia. 17 October - 19 October 2018. Related URL.

O'Hagan M (2018). Captions on Holodeck: Exploring the use of augmented reality to project lecture captions to improve learner experience at university. Paper presented at Fun for All V: International Conference on Video Game Translation and Accessibility, Barcelona, Spain. 7 June - 8 June 2018. Related URL.